Too many beards in the NESCAC.
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Although not mentioned in the Tufts article, Middlebury was also included on the list.
OMG, I’m so glad you explained that. 
You won the thread today 
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UNC alums must be thrilled to be in such fine company with Liberty and Hillsdale College and Baylor.
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An Argus article includes a chart of annual admission dean departures across the NESCAC LACs:
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Good reporting by the staff of the Argus. Turnover in admissions across the industry is high (not sure how the NESCAC schools compare.)
The details of the Wesleyan situation seem to not be the norm, sounds like a poor workplace environment. It will be interesting to see if there are any management changes at Wesleyan once this admission season is over.
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Just based on the graph, it seems like there’s hardly a story here for Wes. But the actual story itself seems to be mostly about one employee in a leadership role and the legions of people she’s pissed off.
I’ve never worked in admissions, but I wonder nonetheless how AI can be employed in the admissions function. One of the charges people make about higher ed is that the administrations have become bloated. I don’t know if that’s a fair charge for admissions departments but at first glance you wonder how many people you need to run a department at a school of less than 3,000 students.
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I have no idea what the solutions are, but I think the question is not how many students, but how many applicants. I would rather humans read those applications (even in the first round) than AI.
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It would seem like her tenure would be tenuous after this kind of public exposure. I just have to hand it to the student journalists:
“The Argus analyzed public staffing data from admissions offices across the NESCAC to put the waves of resignations into context.”
I mean, who does that?
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Exactly. Wes turnover just a bit higher than the other NESCACS. High admissions staff turnover is prevalent across the industry. (Not sure how the industry average compares to the NESCACs)
It depends. NESCAC school admission staffs have to do less ‘selling’ than do admission peeps at less selective schools. Admissions at many schools are sales forward jobs.
It’s also become relatively common that admission employees are only ten month employees. Then there are the thousands of part time reader who only work seasonally and 20-30 hours per week, pay for these is $18-$25/hr on average. We’ve talked about admission salaries on other threads recently, but entry level admission salaries are lowish, in the $40Ks at many schools. (Avg college grad starting salary is around $65K) And those salaries stay relatively low. So, admission staffs are probably not breaking the bank anywhere.
As for AI, I’ve mentioned this before, but the school where I work is trying to figure out if AI can be part of the process. Short of having the student do the work and enter their grades into some existing or new system, we so far can’t get AI to even evaluate transcripts the way we want. There are just so many different situations. And HSs change transcripts and weightings and course names often.
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Good reporting, but I believe the Argus misttitled its chart.
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Definitely experienced the difference in “sales” jobs between Oberlin and Wesleyan, for example. Oberlin is very much in the job of selling. And their marketing is quite good. The outreach my son received was personal, attentive, creative and good-looking, both during admissions and after he was accepted EA. Wesleyan was kind and replied promptly to questions and updates but definitely not in the mode of convincing. TBH I wouldn’t mind a little more attention
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Yes, this is so true. Same experience for D26. And Wes is the only school that we’ve encountered that doesn’t provide email addresses for their regional AOs. It feels weird to me to text an AO with questions (even though I’m certain the number just goes to their computer) as opposed to writing an email. For my kid, the correspondence just got lost in her texts. Oberlin just sent DD a bunch of swag and the communication has been very 2 sided with them. And I don’t think it’s a ranking thing, because other schools ranked similarly to Wes have felt more ‘warm and fuzzy’ in their communications with her. I do feel like Wes could up their game in that area, for sure.
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Oh, believe me. They make up for it on the alumni end. 
I’ve really struggled with Wesleyan getting buy-in for alumni events. We have a lot of traction in our area, but because it’s not the northeast, Wesleyan doesn’t help us spread the word about our events so we go it alone and have a good time anyway.
Warm and fuzzy goes a long way. Neither of my kids ended up at these places but Rhodes and Dickinson were so great in that regard that I always recommend them to other students.
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Really? I get so much email during the course of the year about events around the country. Granted, a majority of them have to do with President Roth flying in specifically to events held in big cities. I also notice an uptick in online events. Personally, I only have so much space on my calendar for meet-and-greets. But your point is well taken; I live 3 hours away and between Homecoming and Reunions, Shasta lectures and Hugo Black lectures (not to mention, getting together with friends who live nearby) I feel pretty connected.
This is why, by the way, I posted the article here rather than in the Wesleyan forum. In fact, two other NESCACS show higher annual peaks than those of Wesleyan.
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We plan fun stuff, off the cuff. Wesleyan hosts about two events a year in Atlanta otherwise. I still go to reunions and see my Wesleyan friends too, I just wish alumni affairs was more excited about promoting events outside NY, MA, and CA.
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